New York State Senator Greg Ball, the one who’s been getting all the attention for his tweeted call for torture. Hannity had him on, where he proceeded to say his view on torturing a wounded 19 year-old suspect was “from my heart.”:

Fox News host Eric Bolling:

“My dream of real justice would be a July 4 celebration of stringing this son-of-a-b-tch up in the Boston Common and letting the crows pick on his rotting flesh,” says Ted Nugent after complaining that it’s taking too long to bring him to trial, though he doesn’t specifically mention torture.

Therewereplenty of peoplecalling for this and worse on the internet. But in one capacity or another, all of the above are considered leaders in the GOP or conservative movement. Maybe Fred Barnes is right about Bush being back in style.

Needless to say, all of them should have known that at this point there’s no reason to suspect that Dzokhar had any connection to terrorist groups beyond reading their propaganda. It’s also probably safe to assume none of them read the Constitution Project’s new report on torture, which Phil Giraldi explains here.

It really seems that, to a certain kind of movement conservative, the constitution is really just a rhetorical device to use against your political opponents, and is readily discarded when it suits their political purposes.

“In one capacity or another” is doing an awful lot of work in that sentence. I’d never heard of that NY guy and, sure, some people like what Trump and Nugent have to say. But not many consider them “leaders” and finding a bunch of lunatics on Twitter isn’t hard. This is pretty thin pickings. I think a more interesting point to be made is all the conservatives who prominently and forcefully disagreed with McCain and Graham showing that the tide is turning the other way.

Nugent’s call for crows picking him apart i believe would fall under cruel and unusual punishment, but yes, it’s not torture. — Mr. Robby

The prevailing assumption, of course, is that cadavers are highly impervious to torture, and simply won’t talk no matter what means are inflicted upon them.

Accordingly, even Mr. Nugent ‘s demand for the crows to pick apart a dead man would not constitute an instance of “cruel and unusual punishment.” The dead are … well, they’re dead, and thus quite beyond the reach of mortals’ punishing.

The ever-ostentatious rocker, instead, appears to be more interested in a swift hanging, and an even swifter judgment (of “guilty,” it would seem). No more, no less.

We must discover what turned him and his brother from apparently well-adjusted, popular, and fun-loving young men into religious nuts and hatemongers. The evidence we have points to a rather abrupt change in their characters. We need to understand. There must be warning signs, coded cries for help. If we don’t understand, then we can’t prevent the like from happening again.

Empathy: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” If we can’t summon it by appealing to some vestige of Christian charity still latent in the vindictive voices above, then maybe an argument on grounds of sheer self-defense will make a dent.

Colin R, I’ve been wondering the same thing about America’s current culture vs. our prior self-image as reflected in older fictional characters. It seems like we’ve come a long way from “Shane” or Rick in “Casablanca” — guys who were really reluctant to start shooting people, even if they seemed to be pretty good at it once they decided to do so.

Every so often, I think to myself, “If I was still in film school, I could turn in a paper about that!” My other recent idea — how the characters in “Revenge of the Nerds” foreshadowed the components of the Obama coalition.

Doug: People make decisions first, and then look around for reasons to justify their choices. It doesn’t matter what the reasons are. This isn’t true only of conservatives — it’s a universal human characteristic. Reason and consistency are not.

Don’t think these two had any connection to AQ…AQ struck the World Trade Center…it had SYMBOLIC significance as the icon of international capitalism…AQ would not have struck randomly innocent civilians like these two clowns did….

“Ted Nugent wasn’t calling for torture in the quote you cite. He is calling for a public execution. Capital punishment is not unconstitutional.”

He was calling for a public lynching. I do realize that it is possible to make a traditional argument for that, based on historical precedent.

Unconstitutionality doesn’t count for much; the Bill of Rights is now a Bill of Privileges the government can decide to revoke on the authority of a Yoo-style secret memo.

As both conservatives (probably due to both neocon and libertarian rejections of traditional morality) and liberals embrace understandings of truth that no longer coincide with Christian morality, it’s really no surprise they all say and do things that American icons of an earlier age would be horrified at.

But count me horrified still. I am stunned at how easily what I thought were essential and institutional American ideals have been placed on the scrap heap. And not by immigrants, but by native-born, mostly white European Americans whose parents bequeathed them what is truly precious about America, and which they have squandered in a single generation.